[3017] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Reading List
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Mon Jul 20 22:15:03 1998
To: Jon Callas <jon@callas.org>
cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 20 Jul 1998 17:48:47 PDT."
<v04003a0cb1d9953311e0@[161.69.48.157]>
Reply-To: perry@piermont.com
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 22:01:02 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Jon Callas writes:
> What books and articles would you recommend someone to look at to learn
> about crypto, security, and privacy? I'm looking for suggestions, simple,
> intermediate, and advanced.
For cryptography, I personally recommend two books:
1) Kahn's "The Codebreakers". No, it won't teach you anything about
how cryptography is done NOW, but it will teach you a bit of respect
for the field in a way that no text about the modern science can. "The
Codebreakers" is the story of how cryptography has been used, misused,
and broken, for the last 2000 years or so. The biggest practical
lesson it teaches is that your advesary is out there and will take
advantage of every mistake you make. BTW, this is the book that I read
when I was a kid and made me want to study the field -- I hear legend
that the same thing happened years earlier to Whit Diffie.
2) Schneier's "Applied Cryptography". This is the best introduction to
the field of modern (i.e. post-DES, post-public key) cryptography in
existance.
Perry
